The Science of Character

Reviews / Votes

"With an acute ear for the references that give metaphors their edge, as in Eliot's unforgettable image of a squirrel's heartbeat as a figure for that which we cannot bear to know, Brilmyer brings the soaringly evocative back to earth, giving us a new science of literary analysis." * Critical Inquiry * "Brilmyer's book shows how the realist imperative to adequately describe the relation between characters and their circumstances unwound Victorian Realism from within, as new scientific theories of matter, force, and cellular life led high Victorian realists- such as George Eliot and Thomas Hardy-and a subsequent generation of New Woman novelists to press the form to its limits and beyond. A major new study of literary character, The Science of Character is important not least for the way it revises the literary history of Victorian Realism and its ends." * Studies in the Novel * "Brilmyer's work marks a new epoch in the study of realism. Developing out of deep historical research and an engagement of the thinking of philosophers, theorists, and scholars of character, Brilmyer reverses dominant understandings of the way late nineteenth-century fiction developed to trace the emergence of an impersonal dynamic materialism that from George Eliot forward reimagined the nature of character itself. This is an extraordinarily original and important contribution, both to the history of realism and the novel and to new theorizing about matter." * George Levine, Rutgers University * "The Science of Character brilliantly and boldly renews discussions of the late Victorian history of the novel. Brilmyer shows us how figures such as George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Olive Schreiner revised the definition of a realistic character along new, materialist lines. That revision demonstrated literature's ability to produce insights into the workings of both nature and culture." * Deidre Shauna Lynch, Harvard University * "Character: a slippery term that can denote either a human-like entity in a literary text or the specific assemblage of traits that makes one person different from others. In this beautifully argued book, S. Pearl Brilmyer refuses to choose between these two possibilities. Instead, she shows how novelists at the end of the nineteenth century enlisted the former in the service of discovering the workings of the latter-how, that is, George Eliot, Sarah Grand, Olive Schreiner, George Gissing, and Thomas Hardy transformed their aesthetic practice into a science of character. Turning the study of literature and science on its head by demonstrating the degree to which the production of literature was a scientific endeavor for these writers, she also formulates a unified field theory of the late-nineteenth-century novel that recognizes the centrality of women writers and finds in New Woman fiction the key to that novel's theorization of character and circumstance as inseparable. Bracingly rigorous, intellectually thrilling, exhaustively researched, with far-reaching consequences for our understanding of the novel: The Science of Character is a remarkable achievement." * Cannon Schmitt, University of Toronto * "The Science of Character is learned and continuously intelligent, a model of philosophically informed criticism. Brilmyer makes a theoretical advance in the conceptualization of character, realism, and the novel itself. This book provides a rigorous proof of concept for feminist New Materialism, and deepens our understanding of several canonical writers. The Science of Character redraws late-century Victorian literary history." * Andrew Miller, Johns Hopkins University *